203 - Depression Protocol

So that happened. "That" being a day when I sunk hard. Full hopelessness activated. But with it came an insight, and idea, and a challenge that I have brought into the community. 

Mentioned in the podcast: Skye Waterson's "Learn How To Maximize Your Time" workshop. Click here to learn more

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Boy, did I have a doozy of a situation last week. It was a day-long doozy. Not a huge fan of doozies. What are you gonna do? Well, that happened. Let's talk about it. You are listening to ADHD Big Brother, the podcast for adults struggling with their ADHD, their comorbid depression, their anxiety. Oh, it's just a nuke. I'm your host and your ADHD Big Brother, Rush Jones. I've got ADHD too. I've got depression as well. It's craftastic. So let's learn some stuff. Let's laugh at some stuff. Let's make some commitments to do some stuff. Ladies and gentlemen, here's some stuff. Welcome to the podcast. Welcome one and all. First of all, first and foremost. Formo what do you foremost? What is that? Of the most-est? The absolute most of them all. The most before the most, the first and the foremost of alls. My God. I've lived 50 years on this planet, and some words I still I take them for granted. I say them. Sometimes I say them in the wrong places. Anyways, at the top of our list today, our friend Sky Watterson, host of the ADHD Skills Lab podcast, which is amazing. If you haven't heard it, go and check it out. She's coming to ADHD Big Brother to give us a free workshop on getting the most out of our time. She's going to educate us on the 80-20 rule, and then she's going to hang out afterwards for the QA. Sky's amazing, and this workshop is going to be available at ADHD Big Brother. But you don't have to be a paid member to attend. So resty weary heads. We have a public event space. So if you want to see some of our past replays in the public space, you can go check that out. We have some fun events there. I'm not going to lie. Pretty rad. Some really fun things happening over there. You should really chuck it out. Link to that will be in the show notes. Alrighty, this whole episode is basically going to be a mental health report. And it is based on opinion, my opinion. So put on your appropriate filter. Get your bullshit meter out. When you hear the bullshit, just feel free to ignore it. I think it's important to normalize talking about our Skull Spaghetti, the good, the bad, and the weird. And I had a very weird, bad situation last week, and I want to talk about it. I want to fucking talk about it. You guys know I have depression, right? It's in the goddamn title. What do you mean you had no idea? Are you oh wait a minute. Are you guys do you just click plus 30 or whatever? You never listen to my intro music thingy deal? Okay. I talk about it in the mental health re whatever. I have it. I possess it. It's like it's a mole or something. I if you look at the back of my shoulder, there's a big patch of depression there. And I've tried all the creams and they're not working. I had a day going quite well. Uh, and then I sank. I hard, zero to total hopelessness, full apathy towards the world. I couldn't see my place in it. It's just insane. And it came without warning. This was on the heels of me having a fantastic coffee and breakfast meetup with a buddy uh I hadn't seen in a while. Shout out to you, Brett. Brett's probably gonna listen to this and be like, wait, what happened? Things were it was such a great, yeah, it was. This came out of the blue, bro. Could have never foreseen this coming, that the day was gonna turn out shitty. At some point, and I can't remember exactly when, but I just dropped. And for those of you who don't know, maybe this for context or whatever. I uh I'm not on any medication for anything except for my blood pressure. I I'm the side effects guy. It's that's my ADHD superpower, I guess. All the medicines work like a treat. They and I go, yeah, that's amazing! And then I get like a bloody nose, or I crazy mood reactions, or libido destroying side effects. Um, and it was the same with depression. It's like, yeah, it got me out of it, but at what cost? Always a cost. Uh, and I'm well aware. I know that there's a bajillion options and there's a trillion dosage variations. And eventually, if I just keep at it, I could probably find the right medicine for me. Well aware. Well aware. And I'm also well aware of that it there's an experimental period with every medication, and it can be a fucking slog of a journey, right? Show of hands, fucking slog? Anyone? Yeah, sloggy. Hanging in there to see if the side effects lessen. Uh, my experience with depression medicine is that it can take a couple of weeks before it reaches that therapeutic level. So I'd have to ride the storm out a bit before truly assessing. But at the same time, through the medicinal journey, I was working on developing some pretty awesome skills and some great self-acceptance on, you know, this journey. And I did have a thought that I might try and get back on the medication, but ultimately I changed my mind. So I want to share with you guys what I wasn't gonna say what I did, but it's what I'm doing, what I'm going after, what I'm working on. And maybe it helps you. Or maybe it's so relevant to your life, or maybe you just skip this episode. I don't know. I don't know you. You do you. Um, so the actual feeling and the essence of this uh depressive episode, I'll describe to you. And honestly, I don't know if you officially would call it a depressive episode. I don't fucking care. I'm just putting the words that I know to the thing that I experience. It feels like my soul weighs eight times as much. It feels like my load, like that feeling, the weight of the world, it just drastically increases. And then my energy to move them around in it is just zapped. So hopelessness is the closest word I have. Anything I think about gets filtered through a description of how hopeless things are, right? If I think about my kids, the only thought that will come is how everything that I can't be for them. Uh or I think about my finances, and it's only about what I don't have and the hopelessness of ever achieving more. It's it just everything gets filtered through that. In my self-awareness of the time, I'm like, okay, I'm depressed. Uh, I know these things aren't true, but they feel so true. And they provide me with the dread of that as the reality. I found myself cycling through a lot of things that I could do. I found myself wondering, okay, what might help me get out of this? And I started asking myself, okay, what do I think caused this? And that frustrated the shit out of me. I was like, who cares? Who gives a shit why it happened or how it happened? It happened. I'm here. What am I gonna do? I'm gonna get to know what triggered me and then remember that that is a trigger, and then somehow remember to avoid that trigger for the rest of my life. Okay, that's not real, and I'm easily going to forget it anyway. I want out of it. In the moment, I want out of it. So, but in the moment I couldn't decide what to do. I can't drink it away because I'm in a no-alcohol challenge in my community. So great, okay. I didn't want to distract it away with video games or watching TV because the thought of that made me think that's probably gonna make it worse. Vegging on the couch, feeling worthless, pass. I could meditate, but ugh, really, I don't want to. I could sleep, yeah, that'll probably make me more tired and make it make it worse. I could go for a walk, that would help. I don't feel like it. Exercise, what would I even do? Could call a friend, I don't have the energy for that. So I'm cycling through all these things that could maybe help boost my mood, and yet I'm unable to do anything. What I was wishing for in the moment was a protocol. Some kind of a depression protocol that I could follow, a checklist of easy shit that would hopefully, by the end, give me some form of a raised mood. But it's not something I can create in the moment when I'm depressed. I can't do it, nothing's gonna work. That's my belief in the moment. But if I had a predetermined checklist that I could just half-ass my way into, perhaps. Perhaps something different. That's my experiment. Here's my thinking. I don't think it's enough to just come up with a protocol. I need to practice it. I think we often think in the moment, I just need some kind of a routine for this moment, but it's really hard to come up with it in the moment, as I was mentioning earlier. Like when we say, like, okay, next time I'm gonna do A, B, and C, well, then a couple months later, when the depression hits, I'll for I'll forget. Do I even have a protocol in the first place? It's like just like a basketball player or any other sporting person, right? You don't get good at a sport just by showing up on game day, right? If we have to put the practice into the skills even when we don't need them, so that when we do need them, it's easier and we're more efficient, we're more likely to succeed. We gotta do that, we gotta practice the free throws so that when we're in the moment of having to do one in a game under nervous conditions, we can execute. So let's see if this even works. Maybe it won't. I don't know. Here's what I'm thinking. I'll share what I'm gonna do, and then I'm endlessly curious how you guys are gonna handle these things. Um, okay, so let's talk about my depression protocol. Remember, I'm not a doctor. Um, you know, depressions are different, but what works for one person doesn't work for the other, yada yada yada. Make your own choices, all right? Uh, I created this as a challenge in our community as well, and I'll lay it out here so you guys can play with yourselves. Not like that. You can you can try it also. Does that make better sense? Uh, or you're always welcome to get the massive levels of support at the ADHD Big Bro community. Um, I think we should rename it to like ADHD Big Brothers and Sisters, you know, because that that's what we are to each other. Oh, while I'm here, you know what? Let me quick shout out Mick and Mark Z. Mick hit 200 days in a row of daily accountability. That's 200 days in a row of him doing the thing that he said he was gonna do. He earned the Skull Spageti badge. Spaghetti. That's that's that's us miss mixing school spaghetti and Jedi. Yeah. Yeah, we're creative up in there. And then Mark Z hit 100 days again. Skull Spaghetti Mastery, shout out to you guys. We've got a pretty cool setup in there. I'm not gonna lie. Tell your ADHD friends. If they're tired of knowing what to do and not doing it, we got a system that clearly works. You know, if you can log in and show up. Okay, so this particular challenge. I'm I'm gonna say I have to do this protocol 30 times in 120 days. Because I don't want to make it a 30-day challenge. That's way too much. The protocol is easily an hour long. I'm not trying to build a habit. I'm I'm just trying to get good at a protocol. I want it to be easy, I want to know what it feels like to go through it, and I want data points on whether or not it's effective so that I can iterate it if necessary. All right, do you want to hear what it is? No? Uh that I wasn't expecting that. Okay. Well, um thanks for tuning into the show. Uh don't forget to like and subscribe. Leave a review.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

I really want to tell you what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_01 11:18

Uh all right. Okay, never mind. I'm being weird. All right, I want to begin by taking stock of my mood. That's the the start. Start by taking stock. I'll write down one to ten. How do I feel? If I'm sunk, right, it'll probably be like a zero dramatically. Um, but if I'm practicing this on it during a time when I'm not feeling down, maybe it'll be a seven. So whatever my mood is, I'm gonna assess it. Easy enough to come up with a number. And then here, I'll try to abridge it for you. So then I immediately go to drinking a small glass of water. That's so simple and easy to do, and I can do it. Boom, I'm checking another thing off a list. That in and of itself will probably make me feel, okay, we're doing a thing here. And then uh I have an activate joints, which is literally I'm gonna stand there and I'm gonna roll my wrists and my ankles. I'm just gonna start getting my body moving. Then I'll do a few yoga stretches. And keep in mind, I'm not doing a yoga routine. I'm literally gonna do the child's pose, cat, cow, bird dog, three easy things. Maybe I'll hold them for five seconds. I don't know. I'm just gonna move my body into those positions and be done. What I'm looking for here is to get my body moving because allegedly that can help. So then it'll be a series of like 10 push-ups, then I'll go five pull-ups, 15 squats, just simple things to do in a row. I'm not doing a workout. I don't give a shit about reps or breaks or rests or anything like that. I just want my body to move and to do these things. Um, and there's probably like seven or eight of them. I'm looking at it right now. I'm not gonna go through the whole thing. But the uh then I'll have another small glass of water followed by a short walk. I have a very specific destination to a specific stop sign that's it's not that long. And I'll have a depression playlist playing. So music that either juices me up or makes me feel whimsical or whatever, songs that I've pre-picked out. Um, and then when I get home, I'm gonna grab a handful of almonds with a small glass of water. Uh, and then I will sit my ass on my meditation cushion and do a Malibead meditation with the mantra, My Light is returning. I think in visuals like that. So I can connect to that idea of light coming back to me. And for me to sit in that and go, what does that feel like? What would that be like? Um, you know, I almost think of it like an acting exercise, you know, for you actors, how you you think of thoughts and you can work yourself into an emotion. That's similar. It's kind of what I'm going for with a visualization through the meditation. And then at the end of that, I'll set a timer for 10 minutes and clean something. The 10 minutes uh is a short enough time that I can see myself doing something miserable like cleaning, but there's always a positive feeling at the tail end of cleaning something. Seeing the environment a little bit cleaner always helps. So uh, and then after that's done, I'll rate my mood again, one to 10. So at the end of this, I'll have 30 data points. So a couple of points on this, too, is that if I'm depressed and the music is pulling me, I might just keep walking with the mindset that you know I'm walking away from feeling bad or walking towards feeling good. I'll just play around with that. My thinking is that I can go to therapy, I can work on those triggers, I can do the thought work and the reframes, but and I don't know if this is because I'm older now, but I find that my triggers are gonna trigger. I'm gonna be surprised by how suddenly I feel shitty. That's going to happen again, almost certainly. And spending time sitting around speculating and trying to figure out what the trigger was and how it happened, that's not gonna make my now change. And I want my now to feel better. So I tend to do that therapeutic self-reflection inner work. I do that a lot. And my hope is that by doing these physical and mental activities, that I might guide my now into a better spot. You know what I mean? A little less gloom, a little possibly a little less gloom. Is there science to back this up? That is a great question. I don't fucking know. I'm not gonna research it either. I had an idea based on when I was down in a moment of self-awareness. Guys, I'm so busy. I'm not, I'm almost positive that none of these things in and of themselves are a magical cure, all right? Handful of almonds is not going to solve my depression. And if it does, holy shit, Eureka, wow. But perhaps this protocol might take my shit mood into a less shit mood. I'm gonna guinea pig it and I'll tell you what happens. If you look at this, it's basically just saying, hey, Russ, do some healthy stuff in a row and let's see who you are after. You know, I get because I I get I can easily get lost into the science of things a lot of times. I love it. I love that they do it. I'm not anti-science and research, but sometimes it's like, you know, eggs are good, eggs are bad, eggs are good again. I don't know. And we're all so unique. So most studies are like, you know, 75% success, that means it's good, but you know, I'm probably a 25% uh other person, outlier. So, you know, what if you're allergic to almonds, right? My protocol is gonna send you the ER, right? We're all different. What I'm really after here is something that might work and that I don't have to think about when I need it. I've got the checklist printed out, it's on my whiteboard. The challenge, I've in the community I called it master of protocols. Well, it's gonna live in my daily accountability post every day. So I'm gonna see it. I'm gonna remember that it's a thing, and I will see that it's something that I'm doing, and I will schedule it. And I will challenge myself to do it when I don't need to do it, to build the muscle. And if it proves to boost my mood, and if it proves to be easy to initiate one small thing at a time, then man, I will be super excited to bring my level two mood to a level four or five. Or what if it goes to seven? Holy shit, balls. Omens! The other option, which I know works, is to get on a depression medicine again. Um, you know, and I say that man, it works. It absolutely works. And holy balls, if you're somebody that doesn't have to deal with nasty side effects, and even if the side effects do happen, maybe it's worth it to get out of that darkness. I mean, some people experience it really, really intensely. Um, and when I did, I got on medicine. So I'm not a I'm not a poo-pooer of the meds. I like them. Allah ka ala. So my question for you guys this week is do you have a protocol for when you experience an unsettling emotion or mood? Or like you get triggered, or an RSD protocol when you get massively dysregulated by a comment, or do you have an anxiety protocol, a depression protocol? I'm super interested in that. Uh, shoot me an email through the adhdbigbrother.com website. Let me know. We all do better together. Sharing ideas, being each other's accountability buddies. I'm interested in what you're doing. Let me know. And I will keep everyone posted as to how it's going each time. I'll I'll keep a running thing going in the community so you guys will see that. But I'll report in here on the podcast once it's all done and I'll let you know what's up. Stay tuned. Alrighty, that's gonna do it. I think we've we've all heard enough of my opinions today. Um, if you're getting value out of this podcast, please share this with your friends. And if you want to learn more about how we're achieving things together at ADHDB Brother, click on the links in the show notes, man. It's all down there. Reminder that Sky's workshop is on Tuesday. So if you you basically have a day. If you're listening to this on the release day, you better get in there because it's starting tomorrow. Um, and anybody else, you can check it out. The replay will be there.

SPEAKER_00 19:07

Alrighty. I think that'll do it. Are we good? Are you good? We're good? Okay, we're good. All right. Hope you guys have a fantastic week. And I will talk to you.